Red Veil operation.

Zoya approached Rigay, a Moscow graduate student who had published a dangerous paper, bore his child, and secretly smuggled her daughter into the Sakhalin Monastery.

And then the training that bordered on abuse. The night circus enjoyed by Russia’s upper echelon. And the Winter Castle....

The Winter Castle, the final gate for Russian operatives.

“――”

Lee Wooshin could do nothing but tremble. This was the answer to why there had been a black-haired child in the great Winter Castle, and the secret of the mansion he had so desperately wanted to know.

“Deputy Director Ju Seolheon...”

You were the one who recorded this?

It had already been ten years working under her. He felt like a blind man groping in the dark.

A child conceived as an espionage tool and slated for retrieval by the United States—Sonia. When he finally opened the pages that meticulously documented how she had been brought to Korea and raised—

Ah.... A groan slipped out despite himself.

Why Ju Seolheon had only released this document after her death. She hadn’t simply been a dual national; she had wanted to keep exploiting the heir of the Solzhenitsyn family to the very end. A few phrases lodged in his eyes like shards of glass.

Thankfully, it appears no memories remain...

She secretly kept company with Yuri Solzhenitsyn...

They were caught while escaping the Winter Castle together...

Waves the size of houses swept through his head, and fine cracks began to split the body that had always seemed so solid.

His pride, the sense of superiority born from knowing only the taste of successful operations, the arrogance that he would never be found out, the selfishness of ramming his “true feelings” through no matter the means, the shamelessness that came with it—

“...—was right in front of my nose.” 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Everything shattered like a clay pot.

“The baby... was alive.”

Han Seoryeong was the daughter Ju Seolheon had smuggled out of the Winter Castle. Han Seoryeong was the little rat that had clung on and survived from the Sakhalin Monastery all the way to the Winter Castle.

Han Seoryeong was that baby.

Han Seoryeong... was my wife, whom I discarded so carelessly.

“――”

Ah, Seoryeong. My Seoryeong.

I carried you in my arms so much....

And I didn’t recognize you. When I set you on my belly and pulled the soft blanket over you, you were so warm....

His eyes burned as if iron skewers were being driven into them. He could do nothing but bury his face in the papers and hold his breath. Lee Wooshin collapsed, unable to withstand the upheaval of that moment.

I’m sorry. I was wrong. I’m sorry. But he didn’t even have the face to give voice to the apology that clawed up through his chest. He hadn’t offered it even in the moments when she exploded in anger.

But it’s the truth. If not for that mission, I never would have met our lovely Han Seoryeong. So I don’t regret that marriage one bit, and I didn’t want to lump it all together as some fucking act.

Call me crazy—I accept that. For me, that’s the most precious memory of all.

What use is an apology anyway. I won’t apologize even if it kills me.

And yet—

“Ugh...”

Clutching his side, he scrunched his stinging nose bridge.

I’m sorry. I was, I am, wrong about everything.

So you have to lose me once too. I’m sick of you and of this place. I’m going somewhere without Kim Hyun, without Lee Wooshin. I don’t want to live as Han Seoryeong anymore.

A savage sense of loss crashed in at last.

Do I even dare to apologize to you—to your life. Is that something I’m allowed to do.

An apology paid with a few words felt too light, flimsy—just a cheap trick.

I resented and opposed Rigay, who killed my family, brought down the great mansion, and even took the baby from me—but I’m the one who bears the blood of the person who trampled your life into ruin. The one who should pay is me.

As the guilt he had sunk below the level of consciousness reared up, Lee Wooshin’s pupils gaped hideously. The whites of his eyes, driven to the edge of despair, split red. It was hard to remain sane.

I’m going back to being Sonia.

But, baby.

Do you think I can’t find you?

If you abandon Han Seoryeong and go back to being Sonia—

I’ll abandon “Lee Wooshin,” too.

“...You can’t track it?”

His eyes went vicious in an instant.

For days he had kept his mouth shut, staring blankly out the window; now, as if flipping a switch, he hurled a cutting glare. Beneath the expression that had seemed so calm, pitch-black emotion surged rough and fast.

Na Wonchang hung his head, ashamed, while Hur Channa sat with one leg crossed over the other and glowered at Lee Wooshin, all hauteur.

She had barged in out of nowhere with a “Team Leader!” just the other evening. With “team leader” being the same title for both an NIS unit and Blast Corporation, he momentarily mixed up which outfit Hur Channa belonged to.

Spewing northern slang with spit flying for a good ten minutes, Hur Channa was, undeniably, useful.

It was necessary to secure even one more hostage who could provoke Han Seoryeong. Thus Lee Wooshin consented to her joining.

“The Owl seems to have taken off the wedding ring. The last ping was at a detention center in Azerbaijan.”

“...She took off the ring?”

Wooshin’s eyebrow twitched as he continued to stare out the window.

“Didn’t wanna look at it, so she took it off, right? What’s so great about a con-man husband that she’d carry that thing around? Ah—! Since our gal ran off with a new man, when she remarries she could melt it down for a trousseau! Except I guess it was too cheap-ass a ring to bother melting, huh?”

“.......”

“Husband: substandard. Ring: substandard...! That phony-injury temper of hers: substandard...!”

“.......”

“So why’re you sitting there like some schmuck who got blindsided, all ‘She took off the ring I gave her?’ The Korean People’s Army’s got better sense than that, you know...!”

Arms folded, Na Wonchang stepped on Channa’s foot as she ranted out of control. She cut a glare at the fragile southern oppa who was desperately signaling her and shut her mouth.

But her lower lip still jutted in a sulk. Sweating, Wonchang pushed on with the report.

“B-but Kiya’s pretty famous in that world. He’s not SVR—Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service—but he goes around doing things that benefit the Kremlin. In that sense, the Sakhalin Monastery seems to be under protection.”

Figures, Wooshin clenched his jaw.

“In the U.S. he’s known as a boogeyman, and recently he was photographed with a dealer in Soviet-made weapons. There’s nothing else.”

“The Sakhalin Monastery?”

“The second enthronement ceremony for their cult leader fell through, so nothing’s moving there—quiet.”

Wooshin gulped water like his throat was sandpaper.

“But, Team Leader... uh...”

Crumpling the empty plastic bottle, Wooshin looked over at the hesitant Wonchang.

“Do you have to... bring the Owl in?”

“What?”

“No, I mean...”

“If you’re going to scratch at me, say it straight.”

Unable to withstand the feral stare, Wonchang ducked his head. Hur Channa, unable to watch any longer, tapped his shoulder as if to say move and stepped forward.

“Team Leader, steel yourself. This oppa’s too chicken to say it, so I poked around Interpol.”

“......!”

“That arms dealer’s an old man who works a lot in North Korea, China, Syria—so I dug only that angle.”

Channa’s lips curled.

“And there was just one shot. Not definitive, but some woman’s caught at the edge of the frame, see?”

“......!”

“Face isn’t clear, and it’s all rumor, but the old man dropped this hint.”

Channa clapped once with a crooked smile. Wonchang squeezed his eyes shut.

“Kiya’s woman!”

***

“Haa... haa....”

Ragged breathing sounded. Seoryeong’s face didn’t change at all despite the slight trembling of her body.

Again today, the wet squelch of friction dragged her out of sleep at dawn. Her body rocked ceaselessly under someone else’s motions.

“You’re doing it again on your own...!”

Kiya was kneeling by the bed, masturbating. Gripping his shaft, kneading the sac beneath, he rubbed his glans hard.

“Haah, ngh...!”

Savage gasps kept coming. She watched the dark-red penis sliding in and out through the ring of his fingers, then finally let out a sigh.

He stroked himself without restraint, eyes full of lust fixed on Seoryeong.

“Sonia.... Ugh...!”

Sometimes the fingers rubbing his glans scratched the split tip with a nail; he mashed his thick tongue onto the rough back of his hand as if kissing it. His red tongue, visible beyond his lips, slobbered and slicked the back of his hand. Spit ran down his wrist in streams. Ugh, for fuck’s sake....

“Kiya.”

At the low, steady call, he snapped his head up.

“How long are you really going to keep this up?”

“Until you look at me—hnn—”

“I wouldn’t touch your thing with the sole of a slipper. Got that? Even when I want to smash your face in, I don’t want my hands on you, not even my foot. So stop while I’m being nice about it. Because of you, every night my sleep is a mess.”

“No. Haa... Sonia... look at me.”

“......”

“You ever seen one this big?”

Even as it was, the sheer mass throbbed, terrifying.